To be a decent gardener you have to understand your climate, the rain
patterns, what the soil is made of, and, even then, you can lose. Think
of it as something fun to do and you won't go completely bonkers.

i agree, some crops you may not succeed with some years,
but it helps to pay attention and read what you can on
soils/plants/biology/botany/etc.
what i've noticed here is that planting diversity helps
keep me more interested too. that even if some patches
don't make it some others might.
i really don't mind weeds and untidyness in the gardens.
i'd much rather have something growing in a spot than having
bare dirt. to me weeds are free energy collectors and free
worm food. when i do need a space i dig a hole and bury the
weeds and then plant over them. by the time the seedlings
get their roots down very far the worst of the fermentation
has happened and the worms are in there doing their thing.
only a few select weeds survive this kind of treatment and
their roots need to be dried out before they get buried (sow
thistle, thistles in general, dandelions, queen anne's lace,
chickory, potatoes).
songbird

put a few carp in your zuke mounds! at the bottom. best
fertilizer ever. :)
purslane grows well here too. starts too late to be a
good ground cover (grows here as an annual). mixed with
other things it's ok. see if you can get some alfalfa
going.
songbird

A few of the local fishing pons have goldfish (ugly carp) in
them from individuals that forgot to flush them. They mess up
the pond pretty bad. Haven't figured out how to catch
them yet.

I just found my purslane sprouts coming up yesterday!
There is a huge debate around these parts that zukes do
better without mounds. So far the flat earth crown is
winning with a higher yield. What are your thoughts?
Also, in my garage, I was going to pot my tomatillos
and zukes next week. We will have freezing nights
still till June. So I put my little pots over by
my garage windows and take them out side during the
warmth of the day (~65-75F), then take them back in a
night. Your thoughts?
Thank you for helping me with this!

We've never planted any zukes, etc. on a mound and they always produced,
some years heavy, some not.

We live where it's hot most of the year so have never had to do that.
Sounds like it would work though. If taking the plants out for a walk
kills them don't do it anymore. <G>
I am really glad we live where we do, even if we do get Biblical floods
occasionally. I DO NOT like cold weather. Had a company in Alaska ask me
to come visit and get a job with them. I was there in the winter of 1958
so just said no thank you for that one.

Hi George,
I can't help that I like the snow. Means trout fishing. It
is pretty too.
I was stationed in Texas for about a year. You forgot
to mention the Biblical sized cock roaches (Water bugs)
and the chiggers (don't walk on the grass!).
I remember being on guard duty in the dead quiet of the
night and one of those Texas sized cock roaches flying
at me. Sounded like a helicopter! (Roaches do to fly!)
Good thing they didn't give me a gun. :-)
I also remember the folks in Texas. Holy crap there are a
lot of nice folks living in Texas. Great steak houses too.
One or two ass holes, but they may have been military.
Tip: ask a Texan to pronounce Bexar, as in Bexar County,
and can tell the military apart from the natives.
My marriage license is from Bexar County. (For
those who don't know what I am talking about, it is
pronounced "Bear", as in "Smokey the Bear".)
Texans also talk r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w.
-T
Oh, and don't ever, never never never ever stomp a Texas
cockroach with your boot. You will wake up in the morning
with about 200 of the cannibalistic bastards all our your
shoe! :'(

We have rainbow trout here too, every year the state stocks a few ponds
nearby with rainbow and let folks catch them. I don't go, it's sort of
like Okay! here's a cow, shoot it.

They're not that bad, if you catch a few you can train them to pull your
kid's wagon.

Which branch of military were you in and during what year? We're renting
the roaches out to the airplane companies now.

A lot more asses have shown up, mostly from the states that have gone so
liberal REAL people can't stand it anymore and they seem to think
they're better than the natives. Most of them run for public office as
quick as they can.

Folks in SE Texas call Bexar as Bayer.

Only in Bexar, the rest of us talk a wee bit faster, particularly if
you're married. That's the only way to get a word in. Some of us even
talk in several languages. We used to have a Russian couple next door,
they got homesick and went back to the frozen tundra. Have about ten or
more nationalities in this subdivision alone, maybe more. Why the hell
are all these strangers coming to my home state. The possibilities of
living a free life and getting a decent job most likely. Some of them
are nice people but some a-holes followed them.

We've been in this house nearly four years now and I saw a roach on the
driveway once and it looked bewildered. I don't know what the previous
owners sprayed around here but it doesn't kill silverfish.

Navy, 57 - 60 active, recalled to active reserves in December 62 for
Cuban Missile Crisis, stayed in until discharged in June 63. I was what
the Navy called a "Titless Typist" Yeoman Second Class (E5). Three years
later the Vietnam GI bill came out and I instantly became a Vietnam
Veteran due to serving six months reserve duty in '63. Went to college
on the VVB starting in '71, graduated in '76. Meantime raising two kids,
working swing shift in a chemical plant, served with the Texas State
Guard from '63 to '76, got out as a Captain in MP outfit. I know Texas
still has a State Guard but not sure about the few other states from my
time in it. Nowadays the Texas State Guard has planes, choppers, all
kinds of stuff handed off to them by the Feds. We used to go help in
hurricanes and tried to keep riots, in the mid-sixties, down to a march.
Out of three cousins and an uncle in my age group. Only one cousin and I
got honorable discharges. I've always thought that was funny for some
reason. That other cousin and I are the only ones of the four that's
still alive. So far I've lived longer than my Dad, gone at 71, Grandad
at 55, Great grandad at 25. As a teen my Dad told me, "Marry young and
breed early if you want a family." I always thought that was funny until
I started doing the family tree. Wow!
Here I sit, will be 77 in September and still kicking. Well, can't kick
much, heart disease, diabetic, barely can walk from multiple strokes,
etc. It beats the alternative in my opinion.
Beautiful day today, current temp is 76F, no rain in sight for a change,
and the dewberries are ripe.

Hi George,
Wow!
It is about to rain again. Right now is is very dark outside.
I am a T2 Diabetic and am drug free for 2-1/2 years now. It is
really easy to do. Ping me if you want to know how.
I had to figure out how to get drug free the hard way, as the
information was withheld from me by the medicals I saw -- didn't
make them any money. They make a lot of money off Diabetes.
Speaking of making money off the sick. The major cause of
stroke and heart disease is homocysteine, not serum cholesterol
which doesn't show any coloration to arteriosclerosis
in autopsy studies. (Yup. You guessed it. Serum cholesterol
and arteriosclerosis is medical fraud.)
Homocysteine is treated with really cheap vitamins, so that
information is also withheld. (The guy who discovered it
had to go to court just to get a job as a coroner because
of the backlash from big med.)
A homocysteine test costs about ~$80 and you don't
have to go through a doctor. Just show up at
a test facility with cash in hand (call first). The test
results will show you safe ranges. (And you paid the
doctor how much to read the same exact thing you can read
yourself? Yikes.)
If you are high, just ping me and I will tell you
the vitamins to take for it.
I think I heard the weeds starting to sing. Probably
just the wind. :'(
-T
Had a customer with a heart attack: skinny, low cholesterol,
exercised at lot. The couldn't find out why. Eventually
declared is hereditary. Charged her out the nose.
Another friend and I keep hassling her to get a homocysteine
test. Her expensive heart doctors refused. Gee Wiz, no
self interest there!
When she finally broke down and got the test herself,
OH MY GOD, she was about 5 times higher than safe. It was
a wonder she was even alive! She now had a different
doctor, taking vitamins, and has recovered nicely.
The state of medicine in the country takes my breath away.
It is all about "treating", not "healing".

i don't grow them. :) if you have a hot
climate and no wind break then they will likely
do better down lower. if your soil is rock
hard and has no water holding capacity and i
don't know how deep your soil is that you're
planting into... well, it's not something i
can say much for sure.
if it is all sand, add some clay and organic
materials. you don't need much clay for it to
help.

we usually get our plants in the middle of May and
plant shortly after that. so sounds ok as long as you
remember to bring them in if there is danger of cold
overnight.
songbird

True. We are going to have a rude awakening when we try to
farm in space or other planets/moons. We should have a
functioning moon colony before we ever try colonizing Mars.
Our dependence on the above is overwhelming and mostly
out of our current understanding.
So, in the mean time, "Water me! Prune! Too Much
Sun! I am too cold! Pick those bugs off me!" And we
will all continue saying "yes master".

Ours was planted in mid-march, green tomatoes on the bushes about the
size of a baby's fist, sweet chillies about six inches long, baby cukes
on the vines, figs are the size of the end of my little finger and the
pears are about three quarters of an inch in diameter. Move south. <G>
George

Thank you!
No pickup truck and no lawn mover.
Just out of curiosity, how deep do you have to go to
keep the little buzzards seeds/root from coming back up?
I am planning on planting two more Ponderosa Pines to kep
my other one company. Their needles will eventually acidify
the soil and provide some ground cover.

Nut grass actually has a nut at the bottom, that has to come out or
another weed grows. Dandelions is a shot at getting it all, we usually
stick a finger into the ground and feel for roots then push it out.
Every weed has some sort of problem with wanting to live and procreate.
Get rough with them.

I grew up in the piney woods of SE Texas, takes many moons to actually
acidify soil that way. It is a cheap way though if you're patient.
Not raining at the moment, more tomorrow is what the weather folk are
saying. Lots of folks in Houston proper and the other cities and towns
on the drainage plain are under several feet of water for the second
year. So far we're just getting lots of water on the gardens and they
are doing well. Sun came out this afternoon and everything growing
perked up. I took a lot of "rain" limbs off the pear tree. Blasted thing
grow faster the more water they get.
George

If you are less patient, see if you can find baled "pine straw." I have
some reservations about the fact that folks seem to be happy to strip
their forests of organic material to sell it, but given that they do, it
would help your (T's) yard a little faster than not. And of course, try
to get as many leaves as possible in leaf season, when folks are
throwing them away...spoiled hay is likewise highly useful (unspoiled
hay is also useful, but much more expensive.) Even shredded paper helps,
though it ties up nitrogen while it decomposes.
Creeping buttercup is currently my least-favorite weed; it will find the
surface from being buried 6" down and mulched over. I now aim for
partially dry and (sealed, anerobic) compost on that stuff.

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.

I wish we had something other than live oaks in this subdivision. We
have a young pear and a young fig that drop leaves but that's about a
quarter bushel of useful leaves. The kumquat tree seldom sheds leaves
and the pine woods behind us have been decimated for more houses. Off
hand we have something between 3 and 5 thousand new homes going in
within a square mile or so.
I am going to drive around the nearby subdivision that has oak and other
leaf shedding trees this fall. I don't think those folks would mind if I
stole their bags of leafs from the curb. Might have to slide around
right after they have all gone to work. Being retired helps with that. <G>
We have a barrel composter, no compost heaps in this subdivision, it is
banned. Shredded paper of any kind takes a long time to compost that
way. I help it along with a bit of water each time I open the barrel and
have recently started soaking the scrap news and other papers. Will see
if shredded cardboard rots quickly when it has been through the
shredder. Looks like a good spot of "brown" stuff for the composter. I
put the egg shells through an old food processor and turn the shells
into very small bits, seems to compost much quicker that way and adds a
goodly amount of calcium to the mix. Also saves those items from the
recycling bin. Our trash output is very small, maybe three lbs worth on
a busy week. We can most of our own food at home so not many cans and
cartons to recycle.
I miss our huge cherry bark oak from our place in Louisiana. Seemed to
drop about a ton of leaves each year that went directly into the
gardens. Thing was a little over nine feet in diameter at three feet
about grade. I even forgave the tree for dropping a six inch diameter
limb through our roof during a hurricane. <G>
George

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